Sharing Technology for the Public Good

For the past three months, developers from across the country have been working with community partners to create mobile apps that will help low-income Americans improve their lives. Hosted by One Economy, the Applications for Good competition challenged developers to think about how technology can improve education, employment, health and finances. We were thrilled to see that the Code for America fellows working on Civic Commons wanted to participate and even more excited to see them win the San Francisco local event with SnapFresh, a mobile app developed by a team including Michelle Koeth and Jeremy Canfield. Earlier this week, Mashable broke the story that they won the national competition for best health app!

“A panel of judges narrowed the entries to five winners. You can watch the winning videos below. They feature apps for immigrants to send money to their home countries, find healthy food, get the most value from food stamps, facilitate conversations between teachers and students over social media, and manage an Individual Development Account.

Applications for Good gave cash prizes totaling $50,000, but the real goal was to motivate the developer community to start thinking about social good not just as pro-bono work but as a potential market.”

The SnapFresh team won $5,000 in the national competition, and they’re planning on using that to further develop the application and roll it out in cities across the country.

SnapFresh takes advantage of the the Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — better known as food stamps — which helps low income members of our community put food on the table. Unfortunately, information about which retailers accept food stamps is hard to find. SnapFresh allows users to easily find that information and access quality food from any cell phone by simply texting. People can just text in their location, and the app will text back the address and directions to the five nearest quality food stores, enabling them to make better, more informed, and healthier decisions.

Congrats to Michelle, Jeremy, and the SnapFresh team! We’re excited to see this important app take off.